Learn to appreciate vacations

A photo grid showcasing a wide range of vacation experiences including iconic landmarks like the City Hall in Philadelphia, historical statues, various cuisines, wildlife, cityscapes, and natural landscapes. A text overlay reads "Vacations"

Here at Sidewalk Safari, you know our motto: Work to Live, Live to Travel, Travel for Work. While we often blend business with pleasure on our adventures, there’s a special joy reserved for true vacations. These are the trips that you spend chunks of paid time off on. Vacations can be as simple as a city break close to home or a trip to one of those far-flung, bucket-list destinations that you’ve dreamed of.

What are the advantages of setting aside time for these impactful, destination-focused getaways?

Table of Contents

Don’t Let Inertia Get the Best of You

Did you know that nearly two-thirds of Americans don’t use all their paid time off each year according to a 2024 study by the QPS Employment Group? It’s easy to get stuck in the inertia of a day-to-day routine of work and life.

However, vacations are important to rest, recharge, and gain new perspectives that you can only get by extracting yourself from the day-to-day. My husband, Scott, is a major advocate for using not losing your vacation time and offers pro-tips on how to make sure you use every last vacation day.

Celebrate Life’s Milestones

In addition to low key holidays and city breaks, think big. Use those vacation days to see iconic, distant locales. We like to use our vacation days to celebrate major milestones like birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries with meaningful travel.

For example, we embarked on two-week trip to South Africa to mark my 40th birthday. And it would be impossible to forget our nine-day Uganda safari! This once-in-a-lifetime experience was a perfect way to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. On this trip, we had the chance to track endangered mountain gorillas and chimpanzees and spot the Big 5 safari animals without competing with throngs of tourists.

We jumped at the chance to travel to Taiwan when our friends invited us to their wedding and to visit Cyprus for my brother’s engagement party.

Detach and Let Go of Work Stress

Unlike bleisure trips, dedicated vacations allow you to properly detach from work and arrive fully at your destination.

Our multiple visits to Japan, including a one-week itinerary by train in Autumn to see incredible fall foliage and a second trip in Spring to chase cherry blossoms, illustrate how embracing vacation time allows for a comprehensive and mindful exploration of a new place.

Proper vacations are about creating memories that linger long after you’ve returned home. We all need time to properly disconnect from work and recharge our personal batteries.

Family Travel and Fami-leisure)

I also include trips to visit family in the vacation travel category. Why? These trips don’t revolve around work and they require vacation time. In my case, my dad, brother, and his family live in Florida so it really is like a vacation when we go to visit.

That said, family travel can feel like work so we often combine family time with a personal trip somewhere else to relax afterwards. I think of these trips as a variation on bleisure travel (business + leisure). In this case, we are combining a family visit and leisure to make a fami-leisure trip.

For example, after visiting my family in Florida, we made time for a Florida Gulf Coast road trip. On another occasion, we did a stopover in Florida and then flew to Costa Rica for a bucket list vacation experience.